Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus communication standard designed to provide a standard communication port between computer hardware and a host computer. Many computer devices or peripherals (e.g., mice, keyboards, scanners, digital cameras, printers, media players, external hard drives, etc.) can be coupled to a host computer using USB.
Released in 1996, USB 1.0 had data transfer capabilities of 12 MBits/s. In 2000, USB 2.0 was released, having data transfer capabilities of 480 Mbits/s. In 2008, USB 3.0 was released, now with data transfer capabilities of 5 Gbits/s. As the data transfer capabilities for the USB connector have increased, the potential applications of the connector have grown.